okay my big mistake.
the scenario is software sequencer playing to a hardware multitimbral
midi tone generator.... does this change anything?
Again, you are limited by the serial nature of midi. You have to understand that midi latency is not only defined by the number of notes firing at the same time, but also number of voices (or tones) your hardware module can generate simultaneously. This is where the processor really comes into play. You can be sending a 3 note chord on only 1 midi channel, but what if that patch is using 4 voices? Technically, you're firing off 12 oscillators simultaneously. It gets more complicated when using combis where you could easily use up polyphony.
Remember that each midi port is still a serial port operating at 38400 baud IIRC (or is it 31,250?), and notes are still being sent sequentially. So even if you have a high resolution midi file, you are still limited by the timing inherent in the midi baud rate spec. This is one of the reasons I have more than 1 module aside from variety of sound sources. 'Splitting' the sequence to output to different ports eases the midi bottleneck making timing tighter. Now this is in hardware. In software, the serial nature of midi is still there but you have higher speeds to contend with making midi latency with software synths almost a thing of the past. (Dizzy yet?)
if you start from a blank project would you use 96 or 448 as your resolution?
I usually try to use something in between. I typically think of the target playback device. 96 PPQN is almost universal among all modules; the Triton operates at 192 PPQN max AFAIK. As much as I like to use 480 or even 960 PPQN, I've almost always got Sonar fixed at 120 simply because of the target devices I make midi files for. If it was for personal projects, I use 480.
yeah it doesnt make sense loading a 448ppq to a 96 ppq hardware sequencer
specailly since it has a lot of "guessing" to do in realtime.
any file loaded to a project could be saved at a higher resolution right?
It can but like I said in another thrread, experiment first. I've encountered midi file playback problems (speeding up or slowing down) when changing resolutions.